EDGAR NOMINATED CRIME WRITER

Tag: excitement

I know things have been a bit quiet around here lately but that’s because I was (a) cramming for and then taking end-of-year exams and (b) keeping an enormous secret that I feared I might subliminally spill. This morning though, I’m finally able to tell you:

[And… BREATHE.]

If you’ve been hanging around these parts a while you’ll know that last summer I finally finished a respectable draft of a serial killer thriller I’d been mostly not writing for the best part of two years. In October I signed with Jane Gregory, an agent I almost hadn’t submitted to because looking at the existing clients on her website, I thought I didn’t stand a chance. After I got my first batch of university assignments done over Christmas I did some re-writes on the book, and it went out on submission back in March. Just five days later, on March 23rd, it was pre-empted by Corvus – an imprint of Atlantic Books – as part of a two-book deal.

(Yes, I’ve been keeping this a secret for the last two months. I know.)

So my debut thriller Distress Signals will be available for your reading pleasure* in the UK and Ireland (and Australia and New Zealand) in June 2016, and I got something I’ve wanted since I was approximately eight years old. Hooray!

This is why I cleaned up my website, diluting the pink a bit, and changed my profile pic from Happy Coffee-Drinking Catherine to Possibly Watches You While You Sleep Catherine, because I can’t be quite so smiley anymore now that I write about murderers and stuff.

If in the last year you and I have met at the complimentary coffee kiosk at a writerly event, I may have described this book as being about “a serial killer on a cruise ship”. This is the extended version:

The day Adam Dunne’s girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads ‘I’m sorry – S’ sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her.

Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate – and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before. To get answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a murderer who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground…

If you want to know more, rest assured that I will be blogging every minor detail of this adventure in the coming weeks and months. So be careful what you wish for. I do have a lot of fun things planned though, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride. You could also sign up to my newsletter, especially if you’re into getting sporadic, pink-tinged e-mails.

Speaking of things you wish for, the little girl below wished for this. That’s why she asked Santa for a typewriter back in 1989. And now, even though she’s had plenty of time for it to sink in, she still can’t quite believe that it’s happened.

And she’s totally going on eBay to see if anyone is selling Barbie’s Magic Van.

*The next phase in this adventure will be a year of sleepless nights and paralyzing anxiety about whether, when the book comes out, anyone will buy it, and if they buy it, will they like it, and if they like it, will they tell anyone – not to mention the little matter of WRITING ANOTHER ONE – until I’m under my desk in the foetal position, clutching a copy of The Bookseller and whimpering.